The present invention relates to a floor frame assembly, and, in particular, to a floor frame assembly frequently employed in the construction of mobile homes and modular housing.
Floor frame assemblies are prefabricated structures typically used to facilitate the construction of buildings, including buildings such as mobile homes and modular houses. Those assemblies that satisfy government specifications are used in the construction of HUD code houses and BOCA code houses.
Floor frame assemblies are normally manufactured or mass produced to lower costs at a convenient site remote from the eventual location of a building. Mobile home or manufactured housing manufacturers use such assemblies to construct a building structure at a factory location. These building structure units which are sized to be transportable as constructed typically each use a single, specially designed floor frame assembly to serve as the entire floor support of the unit. Manufactured housing units may employ two or more floor frame assemblies, each of which provides a structurally sound base upon which to construct a different portion of a finished unit. After the finished portions are individually transported to a final destination, the floor frame assemblies are interconnected to create a stable home base, and added roofing and siding conceals the fact that the house was initially formed in multiple pieces.
Typical existing floor frame assemblies, while useful to speed the construction of buildings, are not without their shortcomings. For example, it is usual for the assemblies to include outriggers, disposed on longitudinal beams, that extend laterally upwardly, necessitating wood fabrication build up in order to be leveled for support upon foundation walls or attached to an adjacent assembly. Other known floor frame assemblies such as seen in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,015,375 and 4,106,258 have outriggers, which are built up from several separate wood or metal components. These types of assemblies, in addition to being more expensive to construct due to the number of independent components, are sometimes more difficult to install. Thus, it is desirable to provide a floor frame assembly which provides adequate strength to the floor frame and which simplifies building construction.